Oh, Eyre it is: Museum unveils Brontë's teeny-tiny early work

A manuscript by British author Charlotte Brontë that fits comfortably into the palm of a hand that fetched 691,000 pounds ($1.1 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in December, more than twice the upper estimate, went on display this week.

The tiny booklet by the author of the 19th century classic Jane Eyre contains more than 4,000 words in miniature letters on 19 pages, which measure less than 1.5 by 2.5 inches.

Brontë wrote the manuscript when she was 14 and living with her family at Haworth in Yorkshire, and it was one of six hand-written “Young Men’s Magazines” she created at that time.

The magazine is set in the fantasy world of “Glass Town”, the earliest of the fictional worlds created by the four Bronte siblings that included Charlotte’s younger sister Emily who went on to write Wuthering Heights.

Sotheby’s, which auctioned the mini-magazine as part of its English literature sale in London, called it “the most important Brontë manuscript to have appeared at public auction in more than 30 years”.

It is one of only a handful of such manuscripts remaining in private hands and the Brontës’ youthful writing is considered to be particularly important in understanding their mature works.

The magazine includes a passage describing a character’s madness which appears to be a precursor to the famous scene in Jane Eyre when Mr. Rochester’s insane wife, kept in the attic, seeks revenge by setting fire to the bed-curtains.